Had not another, on this very spot, prayed her to be reasonable?  She had yielded then.  Mr. Roscorla’s arguments were incontrovertible, and she had shrinkingly accepted the inevitable conclusion.  Now, young Trelyon’s representations and pleadings were far less cogent, but how strongly her heart went with him!

“No,” she said, as if she were shaking off the influence of the tempter, “I must not listen to you.  Yet you don’t seem to think that it costs me anything to ask you to bid me good-bye once and for all.  It should be less to you than to me.  A girl thinks of these things more than a man—­she has little else to think of; he goes out into the world and forgets.  And you—­you will go away, and you will become such a man as all who know you will love to speak of and be proud of; and some day you will come back; and if you like to come down to the inn, then there will be one or two there glad to see you.  Mr. Trelyon, don’t ask me to tell you why this should be so.  I know it to be right:  my heart tells me.  Now I will say good-bye to you.”

“And when I come back to the inn, will you be there?” said he, becoming rather pale.  “No:  you will be married to a man whom you will hate.”

“Indeed, no,” she said, with her face flushing and her eyes cast down.  “How can that be after what has taken place?  He could not ask me.  All that I begged of him before he went away was this—­that he would not ask me to marry him; and if only he would do that I promised never to see you again—­after bidding you good-bye, as I do now.”

“And is that the arrangement?” said he rather roughly.  “Are we to play at dog in the manger?  He is not to marry you himself, but he will not let any other man marry you?”

“Surely he has some right to consideration,” she said.

“Well, Wenna,” said he, “if you’ve made up your mind, there’s no more to be said; but I think you are needlessly cruel.”

“You won’t say that, just as we are parting,” she said in a low voice.  “Do you think it is nothing to me?”

He looked at her for a moment with a great sadness and compunction in his eyes; then, moved by an uncontrollable impulse, he caught her in his arms and kissed her on the lips.  “Now,” said he, with his face white as death, “tell me that you will never marry any other man as long as you live.”

“Yes, I will say that,” she said to him in a low voice and with a face as white as his own.

“Swear it, then.”

“I have said that I will never marry any other man than you,” she said, “and that is enough—­for me.  But as for you, why must you go away thinking of such things?  You will see some day what madness it would have been; you will come some day and thank me for having told you so; and then—­and then—­if anything should be mentioned about what I said just now, you will laugh at the old, half-forgotten joke.”